12/23/2011

Merit Pay is an Insult

Do you think your child’s doctor would do a better job if you offered to pay him more? How about your tax attorney? Stock advisor? I don’t think that they would perform their job any better. I believe (and hope) that the people who provide me a service do so at the best of their ability regardless of direct financial incentive. In fact, I personally do not want anybody providing any service for me that is not – at all times - consciously giving their best effort. This sentiment is increased for me, and should be for you, when it comes to those responsible for educating my children.

Merit pay for teachers patently expresses the belief that teachers would be more motivated by the almighty dollar as opposed to actually helping the students they teach – and that school leaders cannot get the most out of their teachers without such an incentive program existing. Merit pay is an insult to all educators. The supposition that simply dangling the carrot of incentive pay to teachers will cure all that ills the American public education system is asinine. Show me one district where it worked and I will show you three where it didn’t – and I challenge anybody to find a system where merit pay led to sustained positive results over an extended period of time.

Merit pay, however, continues to be discussed as one of the magical elixirs that can cure all that ails the American public education system. In one of the country’s largest school systems (Chicago) the idea of merit pay has dominated the discussion of how to reform one of the nation’s lowest performing school systems. Merit pay simply addresses a symptom of the problems facing many schools – low achievement. The belief is that by paying teachers whose students score higher more money that more teachers will be motivated to work toward that end. In that scenario, low student achievement is the symptom. My question to the leaders of CPS is what is the actual disease and what is being done to address the real issue? District and city-level leadership clearly believe that their teachers are currently not giving peak effort to their students and that leadership either is unable or unwilling to hold people accountable for their lack of effort. If that is the true problem – does merit pay even begin to address it?

American public education needs reform. American public education needs leaders that are not afraid to make difficult personnel decisions. American public education needs leaders who are more committed to advancing education in their school or district than securing their next contract extension. American public education needs leaders to help our country sustain and advance our position globally not blindly follow poorly conceived plans (proven not to work) created by non-educators. American public education needs leaders to step forward to create meaningful change as opposed to simply using outside programs as a crutch to (potentially) achieve temporary gains.